Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave, Where the grey stones and unmolested grass Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave, While strangers only not regardless pass, Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh 'Alas!' LXXXVII. Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild : Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled, And still his honey'd wealth Hymettus yields; There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air; Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare; Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair. LXXXVIII. Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground; No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould, But one vast realm of wonder spreads around, And all the Muse's tales seem truly told, Till the sense aches with gazing to behold The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon : Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold, Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone : Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon. LXXXIX. The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same; Unchanged in all except its foreign lordPreserves alike its bounds and boundless fame; The Battle-field, where Persia's victim horde First bow'd beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword, As on the morn to distant Glory dear, When Marathon became a magic word;* Which utter'd, to the hearer's eye appear The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career great distance. In two journeys which I made, and one voyage to Cape Colonna, the view from either side by land was more striking than the approach from the isles. In our second land excursion we had a narrow escape from a party of Mainotes concealed in the caverns beneath We were told afterwards by one of their prisoners, subsequently ransomed, that they were deterred from attacking us by the appearance of my two Albanians: conjecturing very sagaciously, but falsely, that we had a complete guard of these Arnaouts at hand, they remained stationary, and thus saved our party, which was too small to have opposed any effectual resistance. Colonna is no less a resort of painters than of pirates: there The hireling artist plants his paltry desk, (See HODGSON'S Lady Jane Grey, etc.) But there Nature, with the aid of Art, has done that for herself. I was fortunate enough to engage a very superior German artist, and hope to renew my acquaintance with this and many other Levantine scenes by the arrival of his performances. Siste Viator-heroa calcas! was the epitaph on the famous Count Merci ;-what, then, must be our feelings when standing on the tumulus of the two hundred (Greeks) who fell on Marathon? The principal barrow has recently been opened by Fauvel: few or no relics, as vases, etc., were found by the excavator. The plain of Marathon was offered to me for sale at the sum of sixteen thousand piastres, about nine hundred pounds! Alas! -' Expende quot libras in duce summo-invenies !'-was the dust of Miltiades worth no more? It could scarcely have fetched less if sold by weight, XC. The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow; The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns around. XCI. Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng; Long shall the voyager, with th' Ionian blast, Hail the bright clime of battle and of song; Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore: Boast of the aged! lesson of the young! Which sages venerate and bards adore, As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore. XCII. Afin que cette application vous forcât de penser à autre chose; il n'y a en vérité de remède que celuilà et le temps.'-Lettre du Roi de Prusse a D'Alembert, Sept. 7, 1776. In 'pride of place here last the eagle flew, Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain, Pierced by the shaft of banded nations through; Ambition's life and labours all were vain ; He wears the shatter'd links of the world's broken chain. XIX. Fit retribution! Gaul may champ the bit, And foam in fetters, but is Earth more free? Did nations combat to make One submit ; Or league to teach all kings true sovereignty? What I shall reviving thraldom again be The patch'd-up idol of enlighten'd days? Shall we, who struck the Lion down, shall we Pay the Wolf homage? proffering lowly gaze And servile knees to thrones? No; prove before ye praise! XX. If not, o'er one fallen despot boast no more! There was a sound of revelry by night, The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men; Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, But hush hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell ! XXII. Did ye not hear it ?-No; 'twas but the wind, meet To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet. more, As if the clouds its echo would repeat; Arm arm! it is-it is-the cannon's opening roar ! XXIII. Within a window'd niche of that high hall In pride of place' is a term of falconry, and means the highest pitch of flight. See Macbeth, etc. An eagle towering in his pride of place,' etc. + See the famous song on Harmodius and Aristogiton. The best English translation is in Bland's Anthology, by Mr. (now Lord Chief-Justice) Denman: With myrtle my sword will I wreathe,' etc. On the night previous to the action, it is said that a ball was given at Brussels. And when they smiled because he deem'd it near, He rush'd into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell XXIV. Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago Blush'd at the praise of their own loveliness; And there were sudden partings, such as press The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs Which ne'er might be repeated: who would guess If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise! XXV. And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed, The mustering squadron, and the clattering car, Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, And swiftly forming in the ranks of war; And the deep thunder peal on peal afar; And near, the beat of the alarming drum Roused up the soldier ere the morning star; While throng'd the citizens with terror dumb, Or whispering, with white lips-The foe! They come! they come l' XXVI. And wild and high the Cameron's gathering' rose, The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes: How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers With the fierce native daring which instils The stirring memory of a thousand years, And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ears!* XXVII. And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, t Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass, Ere evening to be trodden like the grass low. Sir Evan Cameron, and his descendant Donald, the gentle Lochiel' of the 'forty-five.' The wood of Soignies is supposed to be a rem nant of the forest of Ardennes, famous in Boiardo's Orlando, and immortal in Shakspeare's As You Like It. It is also celebrated in Tacitus, as being the spot of successful defence by the Germans against the Roman encroachments. I have ventured to adopt the name connected with nobler associations than those of mere slaughter. My guide from Mont St. Jean over-the field seemed intelligent and accurate. The place where Major Howard fell was not far from two tall and solitary trees (there was a third, cut down, or shivered, in the battle), which stand a few yards from each other at a pathway's side. Beneath these he died and was buried. The body has since been removed to England. A small hollow for the present marks where it lay, but will probably soon be effaced; the plough has been upon it, and the grain is. After pointing out the different spots where Picton and other gallant men had perished, the guide said, Here Major Howard lay: I was near him when wounded. I told him my relationship, and he seemed then still more anxious to point out the particular spot and circumstances place is one of the most inarked in the field, from the peculiarity of the two trees above mentioned. I went on horseback twice over the field, comparing it with my recollection of similar scenes. As a plain, Waterloo seems marked out for the scene of some great action, though this may be mere imagination. I have viewed with attention those of Platea, Troy, Mantinea, Leuctra, Charonea, and Marathon, and the field around Mont St. Jean and Hougoumont appears to want little but a better cause, and that undefinable but impressive halo which the lapse of ages throws around a celebrated spot, to vie in interest with any or all of these, except perhaps the last mentioned. The The Archangel's trump, not glory's, must awake May for a moment soothe, it cannot slake So honour'd, but assumes a stronger, bitterer claim. XXXII. They mourn, but smile at length; and, smiling, mourn: The tree will wither long before it fall: The hull drives on, though mast and sail be torn; The day drags through though storms keep out the sun; And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on: XXXIII. Even as a broken mirror, which the glass The same, and still the more, the more it breaks; Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold. XXXIV. There is a very life in our despair, Which feeds these deadly branches; for it were Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore,* XXXV. The Psalmist number'd out the years of man; They are enough: and if thy tale be true, Thou, who didst grudge him even that fleeting span, More than enough, thou fatal Waterloo ! Millions of tongues record thee, and anew Their children's lips shall echo them, and say. Here, where the sword united nations drew, Our countrymen were warring on that day!' And this is much, and all which will not pass away. XXXVI. There sunk the greatest, nor the worst of men, The (fabled) apples on the brink of the lake A phaltes were said to be fair without, and within Vide TACITUS, Histor. lib. v. 7. |